I dunno why I vaguely remember this so well, but back in the 80’ when I dwelt in Portland, there was a young up and coming Writer working for one the weeklies at the time, he was trying to follow his fathers long shadow, his dad had been the local small town Mike Royko or Her Caen type columnist his last name was Baker, so he called the column the bakers dozen, hence the column would be 13 brief paragraphs about something current event mostly local but not always…
So the bus system had initiated an “Honor System” for bus fairs and at the same time hired bus fair cops to randomly board a bus and ask to see ticket stubs, so all there was a smattering of “Godwin violation” jokes about that
So I’m riding the bus one sunny day from one end of downtown down to the other end I lived on, and had picked up a copy of the weekly in question. One of the young Bakers quips in his column was 'I couldn’t help but imagine while riding the bus from old town over to uptown that one of our Hessian fare inspectors boards the bus and confronts a minor celebrity like say a Rip Torn in a bafd wig, for example and in surprise shouting out “Ach du lieber gott, Mein Herr” I’m sure I am forgetting a key set-up line or something , but that was the gist of it, and I don’t know to this day, why it cracked me up on that sunny afternoon and why I still remember that lame joke/pun to this day.
